With our current technology, why cant we zoom in on our moon structures?

I believe we now have telescopes powerful enough to zoom in as close up to the moon's surface as our orbiting satelites can to Earth . Wouldn't this answer alot of questions? For example, is "The Shard" on our moon really a remnant of a loss civilization? Our telescopes should now have the capabilities to give it a good, close-up examination. Am I missing something here or shouldn't we have resolved the mysteries of moon structures by now?

I have thought about this as well, Enough to reason that maybe seeing as 'Hubble' is up there maybe get a few shots ready for any future moon landings, but oh no, we can't do that.
Even thinking as far as Earthbound telescopes could look at the moon but unfortunatley the moonshine (direct light from the sun shining on teh lunar surface)from it would no doubt 'cover-up' any anomalus viewings.
We can see it with any telescope over say 12 inch (over 10inch would give great detail) but a lot of the time we can't be bothered to look at the moon ( as there's nothing there accroding to NASA) because the stars are shiny and twinkly, and we as people are distracted by shiny, and the moon is so close there can't be anything on it as we'd see if with our binoculars and our own eyes.
I have a 'borrowed' 2 inch telescope from my bro but all I can see is the moon with no discernable features, just the craters and shadows, but imagine what something like a 30 or 50 inch would see if the right filters and a ccd camera attached to a computer. Imagine the wonder if someone had the balls and the means to attach a huge Earthbound telescope , a computer and the internet and just posted live images of the moon , How long before the site went down or the amount of "LOL FAKE" replies that the owner would get ?
It's that kind of mentality that stops a lot of people from doing it in the first place.
I for one would if I have a telescope that size. but they're prohibitavley expensive these days.

This subject comes up periodically.

The resolution of any object on the Moon is about one pixel=size of a football field (124 meters) by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Link

It is true that the Hubble Space Telescope can see things very clearly - one can argue that it provides the clearest view of the sky in visible light "colors" that humans have ever had. However, its capabilities are still limited by the laws of physics.

For a telescope with a circular collecting area of diameter D (2.4 m for
Hubble), the smallest feature that one can resolve at wavelength L
(550 x 10^-9 m for visible light) is given roughly by:

resolution = 1.4 L/D = 3.2 x 10^-7 radians

This estimate gives the "diffraction limited" resolution, or the resolution based on light's wave-like characteristics. It is difficult to improve upon this limit.

The distance to the Moon is roughly 240,000 miles. Hubble's resolution
corresponds to a physical dimension of size = x = 0.08 miles = 405 feet = 124 meters at the Moon's surface ... roughly the size of a football field.

This is quite a bit larger than any of the artifacts you would want to see on the lunar surface, so even Hubble's tremendous clarity is not enough for what you would like to do! If we had an aircraft carrier at the lunar surface, then Hubble could probably get a pretty good look at it.

HTH

Badge01
Forum Moderator

reply to post by genma


The resolution of Earth based telescopes are not enough to search for anomalies. For example, take a look at the image of the Moon’s Linne crater taken from Mt Wilson and then compare it with the second image taken by Apollo 15.

Earth-based telescopic image:



Apollo 15 Panoramic Camera image:


Pics courtesy: Astrosurf

See the difference?

Now let’s have a look at Hubble orbiting at an average 500 km above Earth.

The Hubble's primary mirror is 2.4 m wide. Not as big as many ground-based telescopes, but being in space it doesn't have to contend with the atmosphere.

Hubble's WFPC2 is the telescope's main camera. The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) is behind most of the famous Hubble pictures. It doesn't use film to record its images. Instead, it collects information from stars and galaxies to make photographs with the help of four pieces of high-tech circuitry called Charge-Coupled Devices (CCDs)

So all said and done, Hubble’s resolution is 0.06 arc-seconds. So looking at the Earth from a distance of 600 km, it can resolve objects as small as 30 cm. Looking at the Moon from 375,000 km, it can resolve objects as small as 360 m. (Unfortunately, you can’t see those moon buggies and flags!)

And looking at Mars, 75 million km distant at conjunction, objects as small as 36 km wide can be made out. So that’s not too good to see that so called 'face of Mars', what?

Cheers!

Thanks for the info. I thought we had more powerful telescopes already available. I did read a news story about telescopes that are in development that should be many times more poweful than Hubble. I believe the article stated that the first of them should be ready by 2010. Perhaps with those we can really peer close to the moon's surface. Also, in regards to Hubble viewing, if 1 pixel equates to the size of a football field I think we should still see something since many of the moon anomalies are much larger than that. A football field is 100 yards long. The Shard is around 3 miles (5280 yd) long. 5280 / 100 = 52.8. So thats 52.8 pixels to view the anomaly with. I really think we should be able to see something unless NASA is covering it up.

[edit on 29-9-2008 by genma]

[edit on 29-9-2008 by genma]